The present invention relates to electrical connectors and, more particularly, to RJ-11 type connectors.
Today, an RJ-11 type housing, or receptacle, is familiar to everyone--it is the place where one "plugs in" one's telephone line, thereby coupling your telephone equipment or modem to the local-loop. Currently, an RJ-11 receptacle can be a 4, 6, or 8, position receptacle. For example, a 4 position RJ-11 receptacle has four metallic contacts that each provide access to, typically, a respective wire of a 4 wire cable.
Unfortunately, when nothing is plugged into the RJ-11 receptacle the metallic contacts are exposed--which exposes people to the voltage and current levels of any electrical signal present on each of the metallic contacts. This can be especially of concern in some countries outside of the United States, e.g., Great Britain, where 90 volts may be present on at least one of the metallic contacts within an RJ-11 receptacle.
As a result, some countries require that an used RJ-11 receptacle be covered or plugged to prevent inadvertent contact with any electrical signals within the receptacle by, e.g., small children. As a result, those in the art have developed approaches to cover or plug an unused RJ-11 receptacle.
One approach is to provide RJ-11 receptacles with a sliding door that slides over the RJ-11 receptacle opening when the RJ-11 receptacle is not in use. While preventing directs access to the inside of the RJ-11 receptacle, this approach unfortunately does not prevent someone from easily sliding the door open. In addition, this approach requires replacing pre-existing RJ-11 receptacles. That is, RJ-11 receptacles without sliding doors must be replaced with an RJ-11 receptacle with a sliding door.
Another approach is to use an "interference plug." The later is a "dust cover," e.g., a piece of molded, or formed, soft robber thin is pushed into the RJ-11 receptacle. While this approach can advantageously be used with any type of RJ-11 receptacle, the interference plug, like the sliding door approach described above, is easy to remove.
Finally, a practical, albeit imperfect approach, is to use a corresponding RJ-11 jack, or plug, that is modified in the field to not have any wires and where the removal tab is shortened, or broken off. While this approach effectively locks the modified RJ-11 jack into the RJ-11 receptacle it is difficult to remove and aesthetically lacking. Indeed, the difficulty of removal is directly related to how much of the removal tab is broken off. As a result, this approach is not user-friendly.